Hello!

I love to dye fabric, make thread pictures and quilt. I live in the Yukon on an acreage with my husband, 2 dogs and 34 fish. It's the 'good' life.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Hand Embroider Landscape

Another artist, whose work I admire, is Gilda Baron. I have one of her books and have made some little scenes using french knots which is a component of her technique.

Tonight I was not feeling well and decided this was a good time to do some ‘hand’ work, while just sitting around. I pulled out a piece of hand-dyed fabric that I had made at some point in bright pinks and muddy browns. I then added a few strokes of colour to simulate mountains. This piece is about 5”x7”.

I added a few strokes with a brown marker to give me guide lines for my stitching. Then I quickly (like in 2 minutes), sewed a few lines as background stocks and tall grass.

Another 2 minutes and I added some outlines of mountains. I should have done this before I did the grass, but whatever.

All this took about 7 minutes. The next few hours I spent quietly adding french knots to the piece. I was going to leave the piece and crawl into a nice warm bed, but in in a burst of energy, a few minutes ago I stitched on the round leaves with a small zig-zag stitch. This took under 4 minutes.

I’m glad I finished it tonight. This is a great project when you’re not feeling well and just want to curl up on the couch and watch mindless TV.

Tomorrow I’ll look this over and see if this needs any more french knots or other adjustments. I see some stalks that look pretty bare, so I’m sure I’ll need to tweak it a bit..

2 comments:

I've been sick all week too Dahn, and 'bxxxxxxg' isn't cutting it anymore. (I'm told when the crumbs on the table start getting to you, you are really starting to feel better)I know I have a piece of dyed fabric around. A good afternoon project. I love what you did with yours. Keep writing. Ricky